Help grow a heritage garden and learn about Tucson's Origins "where it all started" on the Santa Cruz River floodplain at the base of Sentinel Peak. There are many volunteer opportunities. Now you can take the Streetcar to Mission Garden !!

Board

Friends of Tucson’s Birthplace Board Members

William DuPont

Bill Dupont

Bill was born and raised in Tucson, Arizona and is a descendant of Jose Ignacio Moraga, Commander of the Tucson Presidio in 1791. He received his B.A. from the University of Arizona in education and has a specialty in Special Education.He has been in retail for over 40 years and has held a various managerial and training specialist positions in Southern Arizona.His interests are his family, gardening, art, antiques, and travel. He has been a neighborhood advocate for over twenty years and neighborhood president for two decades. He currently serves on the Arizona State Liquor Board as the neighborhood representative.Bill and his wife, Denise, live in historic Colonia Solana located in the center of Tucson known for the landmark Roy Place Water Tower and the riparian area known as Arroyo Chico. They have one child, Alexandra.

Roger Pfeuffer

Roger Pfeuffer

Roger was born and raised in Michigan and received a B.S. degree from the University of Michigan in 1965 in education. In 1969 he received an M.A. degree from SUNY-Brockport in educational administration. He has done post-masters work at both University of Arizona and Northern Arizona University. He has been an educator since graduation and has taught or administered in Ann Arbor, MI, Ft. Defiance, AZ, Brockport, NY, Singapore, Vail, AZ and Tucson, AZ. His passions are his family, travel, public education, photography and Tucson’s prehistory and history. Roger has been a member of the City of Tucson Bond Project Advisory Committee since September 2013, and a member of the Sunday Evening Forum Advisory Board since December 2013. He has been a Neighborhood Representative of the COT ULI Implementation Committee since January 2014 and an Arizona Archeological Site Steward since October 2013. He has been Vice-Chair of Friends of Tucson’s Birthplace since 2011. He lives in the Mercado District of Menlo Park near the base of A Mountain with his wife, Vera. Both are retired. They have three “children”: Adin-39; Joshua-35; and Bree-33.

Phil Hall

Phil Hall

Currently serving as FOTB Legal Counsel rather than as Board Member, Phil is a native Tucsonan and virtually a life-long resident. He earned his B.A. from Arizona State University in 1971 and his law degree from the University of Arizona in 1973. He has practiced law in Tucson and throughout Arizona ever since. He also serves as a Judge Pro Tem for the Pima County Superior Court. Phil has traveled extensively throughout Southern Arizona and Mexico by foot, horseback, automobile, bus and train. He has had a lifelong interest in the history and culture of native gardens, foods and drinks of the Southwest and Mexico. His spouse of 43 years, Anne-Marie, is a long-time educator who currently directs the Writing Program at the University of Arizona. They have three children: Josh, Megan and Aaron, and three grandchildren.

Katya Peterson

Katya Peterson

A native Tucsonan, Katya is passionate about our community: its history, its many cultures, its environment and its potential. She received a BA from the University of Arizona in French and Spanish literature. She studied at the UNAM in Mexico City, the Sorbonne, the Ecole de Sciences Politiques, and the Ecole du Louvre in Paris. She received an MA in Anthropology from the New School for Social Research. As an activist gardener in NYC, she volunteered with youth and immigrant families in community gardens on the Lower East Side. While working at Housing Conservation Coordinators in Hell’s Kitchen, she joined together with the Green Guerillas and the Trust for Public Land to coordinate a national campaign to permanently preserve the Clinton Community Garden. Eventually, Katya and her family migrated back to Tucson where she worked in school science program evaluations, historic property management and retail. Currently she is a joint owner in a family retail business founded in 1931 and serves on several non-profit boards. Katya loves people, plants, food and life.

Donna Tang

Donna Tang

Although she was born and raised in Connecticut and lived for a while in West Africa, Donna considers Tucson and southern Arizona—its people, its history, and its culture—as home. She came to Arizona for the first time in 1965 and realized that this was the only place where she truly belonged. She moved to Tucson permanently in 1970. She is married to David Tang, Jr., a third-generation Tucsonense, and is the mother of three and grandmother of three. Donna holds degrees from Boston University and the University of Arizona: A.B. in English Literature, Master of Library Science, Master of Science in Urban Planning, and Ph.D. in Comparative Cultural and Literary Studies with a focus on Latin America and indigenous cultures of the Americas. She retired from Pima Community College in 2006 as a faculty member in Social Sciences and in Humanities. Her particular interest is in cultural heritage preservation. She is very committed to preserving and sharing the voices, stories, and places of the southwestern United States and northern Mexico.

Raul Ramirez

Raul Ramirez

Native Tucsonan, married for 40 years with three children. Graduate from University of Arizona with a Bachelors of Science and from Arizona State University with a Masters in Social Work. Completed post graduate studies at Brandeis University at the Heller School for Policy Analysis. For the last 40 years, Raul has worked in clinical and juvenile correctional settings providing counseling services to high risk minority families and children.Active in community affairs and has served on the Tucson Model Cities Advisory Committee, Arizona Board Chapter for NASW, San Agustin Parish Council, TUSD Desegregation Committee, Nostros Board of Directors, and Patronato de Kino Board. Raul currently serves as Board Recording Secretary for Friends of Tucson’s Birthplace and Kino Heritage Society.

Diana Hadley

Diana Hadley

Diana recently retired from the University of Arizona, where she served as Associate Curator of Ethnohistory and director of the Arizona State Museum’s Office of Ethnohistorical Research, where she specialized in the translation and editing of Spanish historical documents.With degrees in archaeology and history from Washington University and the University of Arizona, her work continued to focus on the history of land use and ecological change in the southwestern United States and northern Mexico. A former rancher, she is currently writing a history of the cattle industry on the United States-Mexico border. She has co-authored several book-length ethnoecological land use histories for the Bureau of Land Management and the U. S. Forest Service, including studies of Aravaipa Canyon, the San Rafael Valley, the Bonita Creek area, the Arizona/New Mexico Borderlands area, and the upper San Pedro River watershed. She is co-editor of The Presidio and Militia on the Northern Frontier of New Spain, 1700-1765 (University of Arizona Press, 1997). She participated in the citizen planning teams for the Mission San Agustín Master Plan (1991) and the Tucson Origins Plan (2001) and, as part of the WLB Group design team, wrote the historical overview for the Tucson Origins Heritage Park Master Plan (2003). She has served on the boards of the Center for Desert Archaeology, Native Seeds/SEARCH, the Research Ranch Foundation, the Arizona Sonora Desert Museum, the Northern Jaguar Project, the Jewish History Museum, and as a commissioner on the Tucson Pima County Historical Commission. She has organized conferences on grassland restoration, Native American sacred sites, deforestation in the Sierra Madres, the ecology of the prairie dog, restoration of the Santa Cruz River, and chaired a conference on the Tucson Mission Garden (2006) which brought dozens of experts on Spanish Colonial agriculture and mission construction to Tucson.